1. Kosovo is a part of Albania that was given to Serbia by the “Great Powers” in 1912. It was a part of The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and then an autonomous region of Yugoslavia, then a part of Serbia, and now is an independent country that borders Albania and has a majority population of Albanians. What do I call myself? Albanian. Where am I from? Albania. What part of Albania? Kosovo. Most Albanians from Kosovo would say Kosovo to make it easier on foreigners, but my family has roots in Kosovo, Albania, and the Albanian part of Macedonia. So there you go.
2. I’m here until September because I am taking a course called Risk, Media and Identity at the Kosovo Institute for Journalism and Communication.
3. At the moment I’m in Gostivar, Macedonia, visiting my my grandparents and mother’s side of the family, and I have yogurt on my face. After a bad decision made at a spa/salon in Prishtina, I’ve had a gillion breakouts over my face and neck. I have sensitive skin and should have known better. I went to a sauna last night with my uncle’s wife and tonight my grandmother helped me yogurtify my face (the good yog bacteria will kill the bad zit bacteria).
3. I freaking despise Yugoslavia and want to smack the next person who ever tells me again that “It was alright in Tito’s time, but then everybody became nationalistic after he died”. It was not freaking alright under Tito, he was a dictator (President for Life – really! look it up!) of the labor camp variety, and no, he did not care about minorities or equality among ethnicities any more than the water bottle on my nightstand. Ok, maybe a LITTLE bit more than the water bottle on my night stand. Ethnic tension did not appear out of thin air, it was there the whole time. Ask my grandparents. Or uncle. Or mother. They were around for Titoism, and didn’t help keep my grandfather from being unfairly thrown into prison, or my grandmother from being unfairly sacked (twice), or my uncle from being sent to the middle of freaking nowhere for military duty, or my mother from being harrassed before and after the student protests of the 80′s. Yugoslavia is dead, and thank God it is.
4. In my Globalization class we spent a fair amount of time bashing neoliberalism and capitalism, but what wouldn’t I give for some big private manufacting or mining corporation to swoop in and make some much needed investment in Kosova. Kosovo probably has the most open market in the world, a median age of 25-26 and an unemployment rate that’s at about the %40 mark. A lot of my cousins are studying and working in Europe, and the majority of Kosovo’s young people if they have the chance. The diaspora brings in about 14 percent of the GDP every summer vacation.
5. And my God am I dreading the summer when every single Albanian who works in Switzerland and Germany, and everywhere else (including Canada) descend upon the capital of Prishtina. It’s party time for them, but they forget that people actually live in the city they drive their obnoxious expensive cars in, and that nobody in Prishtina is impressed by how people dress in Zurich. And their accent is even heavier than my North American-ized one.
6. I am planning on doing the unthinkable in Albanian culture – ok, not exactly unthinkable but it’s not really done – in May I’m going to start looking for my own apartment in Prishtina. Most Albanians live with their parents until they get married, or continue to live at home with their spouse, but add another floor or two or three to their parent’s house (which is what my uncle did). I’ve been staying with my grandmother in Prishtina, and as much as I want to keep her company, I would also like to have company over and occassionally stay out past 10pm. So aparment hunting it is. For $400 Canadian dollars I can get a furnished apartment in Prishtina with a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. STEAL.
7. I’ve been taking notes for the essay I have to submit for Drache’s class – a lot of NGO reports on the state of the media in Kosovo. The two reports I focused on today show a very interesting and encouraging trajectory. The first was a USAID Assessment Report that covered 2000-2004, the second a locally conducted IREX report on the year independence was announced, 2008. The USAID report’s keywords were poor management, unprofessional editorial content and journalistic practices, monopolistic distribution networks, political pressure and dependence on foreign aid for the 2000 to 2004 period. The IREX report, while noting where improvements still needed to be made – noted a general set of standards for journalism, an increasingly robust market for competition and ad revenues, creative distribution networks – especially the use of online broadcasts/news reporting/subscription, and more sophisticated business models. In the span of eight years, I would say this is pretty encouraging.
8. I would just worry about Kosovars’ dependence on television as a news source – 89 percent of Kosovars say that TV is their main news source :-(
9. Today my grandmother gave me the first spoon I ever ate with, and the first towel I was washed with.
10. I’m giving my first KIJAC presentation on Tuesday, on Descartes and Locke. I have to get started on that. But, equally pressing, in about four hours my grandmother is going to wake me up and teach me how to make kifle. :P
All of my Gostivar photos are in my camera, so imagine me three hours behind those mountains there, that's where I am.
